Proof Coop Insulation Does Nothing.

[Orchid]

Quote:
Thanks for typing all that out so I can just ditto you, patandchickens.

Neat pictures, though, especially the one of the chickens.

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Well, I have a thermometer on the inside of my coop (an Accurite one) and the probe is stuck out of a vent--so I get indoor and outdoor temps. I can tell you that with my fully insulated (all walls & ceiling and deep litter method, coupled with a 250 watt heat lamp)--on average it's 10 degrees warmer in the coop than it is outside. And my main coop is 8' x 16' so it's not a tiny building.

A few times a year, it will get well below 0 degrees and I lock the chickens in (by putting cardboard over all of the pop holes) and even with the two vents open, the coldest it got in my coop last winter (when it was -20 out with the wind chill) was 16 degrees inside.

Edited to add I used R-19 insulation throughout.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
It is a good thing I was not drinking coffee when I read this (or maybe I should have drunk more coffee *before* I read it), because somehow that is not the *kind* of vent, vis-a-vis chickens, that I was thinking of when I read it. "Oh, owww, poor chicken!" LOL

Pat, who clearly needs to slow down and read more carefully

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm aware of two types of heat loss: convection, which is air circulation and conduction, which is heat being conducted through the wall, roof, or in the raised coops, the floor. If your walls are constructed so that you have a lot of air movement through them, then insulation can help with convection losses, obviously. But that is a factor of how your coop is constructed. I'm going to ignore whether insulation has any effect on losses through the vent system. I simply don't know and think those effects, if any, are probably going to be minor compared to the others.

Insulation will help with conduction losses. How much depends on how your coop is constructed, whatever heat sources you have in the coop, and outside conditions.

I think your heat gun is measuring the temperature of the walls or solid objects, not the air temperature. Maybe a better test would be, on a cold windy day, check the wall temperature inside and out on insulated and uninsulated areas, upwind and downwind sides. That won't really tell you how much heat (in calories) you are losing through the walls, since that depends on the conductivity or R-value of your walls, but it may give an indication of how much the insulation helps.

I love those shots of the chickens. The head and feet did not surprise me, but I like the effect of their wings. There is not a lot of down on the wing tips.

 

[Chickens-246]

I have to tell you I'm a bit surprised on the challenges to a high tech device with "theories and opinions". If insulation did anything in a coop, the thermal camera would see it. Thermal imaging is a growing industry to housing energy conservation and inspection, the wave of the future.

The styrofoam is mounted firmly against the wall with plywood. It should show more of a cold spot than 1/10 of a degree. Vents create a constant air exchange, the lower the ambient, the faster the exchange, the reason most only have 10 degrees warmer inside. Heat raises and wants to go into atmosphere though the vents, plain and simple.

My un-insulated coop avgs 10-16 degree warmer than outside depending on the amount of wind and direction and temp. My venting is less than recommended, but the litter still dries out. My coop is well sealed (except the chicken door) for leaks from winds to eliminate "blow though". Ambient temps in the teens is common. I never use heaters.

Basing that insulation works on inside/outside temp differences is inconclusive, my un-insulated coop has similar temps as insulated ones. A chicken body temp is 103 degrees, inside coop temps is the heat coming off the chickens.

 

[Downshifting]

That is about the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Thanks for sharing the pics!

 

[wildeflowers]

Quote:
Thanks for typing all that out so I can just ditto you, patandchickens.

Neat pictures, though, especially the one of the chickens.

Ditto.

But the argument that chickens do not need insulation even in the worst climates may be valid. I myself, in New England, have no intention of insulating.

I have to tell you I'm a bit surprised on the challenges to a high tech device with "theories and opinions". If insulation did anything in a coop, the thermal camera would see it.

True, but the thermal camera may show a difference in temps if the entire coop was insulated. One insulation panel on one wall will obviously make no difference at all. (See b in the above quote.)​

 

[A.T. Hagan]

That is a really cool (literally!) photo. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Mrs MIA]

I particularly enjoyed seeing the photo of the chickens... I've been telling people for a while now that the chickens tuck their heads under and with a wide enough roost cover their feet and stay toasty warm. THAT's the proof I like to see.

I can also tell you right now from my own experience that without proper ventilation, too much moisture will build up in an insulated building (depending on how many birds are inside) and that moisture is what's going to cause your problems in the really cold temps. Frostbit combs and respiratory problems, in particular.
I have a lot of birds in an 8x8' coop, and I have R19 insulation in the walls. I neglected to put insulation under the floor, and the metal snow-roof is padded on the inside with a lesser insulation. But the pop door is usually open with a towel over it, there are two 4" round vents near the ceiling, and the window doesn't fit right so it's open a little... The birds keep the coop about 20 degrees warmer than the outside temps. The breeder coop, 12x20', is R19 insulated in the walls and ceiling, with double paned windows that close. The moisture that built up in there the first year caused every last bird to get frostbite on their combs, and at higher temps than the ones outside. We have not closed up and insulated the pop doors this year, and things are better with the added ventilation. Temps are still 15-20 degrees warmer inside than outside.
The birds that did the best this morning when we woke up to 0F?? The 12-16 week old chickens that are in a hoop-pen covered with a tarp. The end with the door is open. They had hay to snuggle into, and other birds to cuddle with, and they are all out and about running around like it's a summer day this morning. Not a single sign of frostbite... no heat at all. Insulation is highly overrated. Especially for places that rarely see below freezing temps.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
I do not challenge your high tech device one iota. What I challenge is your REASONING. Which is deeply flawed.

All you are showing is that when the indoor and outdoor temps are similar and when you only have a small section insulated, there is little difference in exterior temperature (which I'm fine with you extrapolating to 'heat loss rates') between the insulated portion vs uninsulated portion.

So what? Who insulates only one little square of their coop wall?

Look. Go get two identical cardboard boxes. Insulate one of them (all over, not just one little patch). Let them sit, open, in your garage outside all night. There will be no difference in their temperatures, nor will there be any difference in their interior temps vs the outdoor (garage air) temp.

Now put a jug of warm water in both boxes, the insulated and the uninsulated one. Leave 'em for a couple hours. COme back and tell me what the temperatures are, or point your handy dandy little thermal imaging gun at 'em if you prefer. Whoa, look at that, the insulated one is warmer inside! (Its exterior temp may be higher *or lower than* the uninsulated one, depending on how much you have let things cool down and depending on the details of your insulation and hot water)

Now let 'em sit out there untouched for about a week

, til it has once again equilibrated with garage temps (and the water jugs are dead-cold). And try again. Hey, now they're the same again!

You see? It depends on whether there is any extra heat in the structure to BEGIN WITH. Insulation is not magic, it just reduces the escape of whatever 'surplus' heat is inside the structure (by surplus I mean, makin' the interior warmer than the outdoors)

Vents create a constant air exchange, the lower the ambient, the faster the exchange, the reason most only have 10 degrees warmer inside. Heat raises and wants to go into atmosphere though the vents, plain and simple.

Yes, that is the purpose of vents. To remove warm and thus humid air.

Nonetheless, properly-planned coops DO (as posters have shown you) stay warmer inside if insulated. Particularly in the very coldest weather, which is when it counts most.

My un-insulated coop avgs 10-16 degree warmer than outside depending on the amount of wind and direction and temp. Basing that insulation works on inside/outside temp differences is inconclusive, my un-insulated coop has similar temps as insulated ones. A chicken body temp is 103 degrees, inside coop temps is the heat coming off the chickens.

That just makes no sense. Sorry, but, it just doesn't.

Look, first you're assuming that ALL the warmth in your coop is merely from the fact that the structure minimizes convective loss compared to outdoors conditions. Which is incorrect. You do have SOME insulation -- it is called *walls and roof*. You just didn't add *more* insulation.

Second, and more important, you are assuming for some reason that there is some magic universal number for the indoor/outdoor temperature relationship in ALL coops. There is a whole big lotta difference in how coops perform just based on the SIZE and MATERIALS and FLOORING of a coop (among other factors). Even right now today, I feel certain that there are BYCers with (say) 8x8 coops that are running identical temperatures indoors and out (in fact I *know* there are, since they have posted recent threads on this

); other BYCers with 8x8 coops running 10 F higher indoors; and yet others running maybe 20+ F higher indoors. NOT BECAUSE OF INSULATION, just because of all the other factors involved.

So tell me this, how can you possibly imagine that despite the fact that your coop is clearly holding some heat in (given that it is warmer than outdoors), fully insulating it would not hold in MORE heat and thus make it WARMER? You haven't even *tried* that, yet THAT is what it'd take to have even just ONE data point suggesting that the title of your thread were true.

Doesn't make sense.

Also, please note that nobody is challenging your high tech device with "theories and opinions" as you claim -- what we are challenging is the conclusions you've illogically drawn from it, on the basis of REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE.

And isn't what actually HAPPENS to indoor coop temperatures, in the real world, what matters??

Here is the deal, in my real-world experience, and based on what the home construction industry figured out about, oh, maybe 150 years ago:

It is very very beneficial (sometimes even essential) to insulate when:
-- outdoors has seriously Arctic temperatures, and/or
-- you are actively heating the indoors with some source that is expensive or limited or you just want to be frugal with it.

It is beneficial (but not life-or-death) to insulate when:
-- it's cold enough outside you start to worry about your chickens, or get aggravated by steps necessary to keep water liquid, and/or
-- you are actively heating the indoors with a source that is cheap but you still see no point in being profligate or wasteful of the heat
AND
--you have some reasonable thermal mass in the coop, what with one thing and another

It is pretty pointless to insulate when:
-- it never gets cold enough to bother the chickens or water, and you're not in a situation where summer insulation would make sense
(basically only makes sense if radiation off a hot wall in evening is a problem, or if you have a source of 'coolth' like ground coolth
or are running an air conditioner or swamp cooler in there); or
-- your coop is pretty much totally fresh-air, like most of one side is open (the extreme of ventilation

)

This is not theory. And the only part that is opinion is about worthwhile-ness; the practical *effects* of insulating in each of those circumstances have been very well worked out in experience, both by livestock folks and by the home construction industry.

Pat​